Secondary Career Development Interventions

Brief IN
National Dissemination Center
for Career & Technical Education
2001 Fast Facts for Policy and Practice
no. 13 by Michael E. Wonacott
Dykeman and colleagues (2001) have developed
a taxonomy of career development
interventions used in U.S. secondary
schools that can help practitioners evaluate
and improve the effectiveness of guidance
programs. They consulted career
guidance practitioners, researchers, and
literature and identified a comprehensive
list of 44 interventions. Each intervention
was rated on five variables: time (short
term/long term), mode (active/passive),
control (adult/youth), place (school/community),
and size (group/individual). Cluster
analysis produced a taxonomy with four
types of interventions: introductory, advising,
curriculum based, and work based.
This In Brief describes examples of each
type of intervention and how they can be
used to achieve desired outcomes.
Introductory Interventions
Introductory interventions awaken students’
interest in their own personal and
professional growth; typically, they are
adult-controlled, active (hands-on) group
activities conducted in school and lasting
2 weeks or less. They include career days/
fairs, field trips, aptitude assessment, and
guidance lessons on personal/social development,
career development, or academic
planning.
Career Days and Career Fairs. Career days
and career fairs can develop students’ selfknowledge
and knowledge of work and
integrate the two meaningfully (Efird and
Sherrick 1998; Grant and Jackson 1995).
Employer representatives become role
models, helping students see the relevance
of interests, aptitudes, abilities, and values
to career and lifestyle choices. Job descriptions
and handouts show connections between
different jobs, aptitudes and abilities,
and educational experiences. Student
questionnaires can help structure interviewing.
Students can begin to develop
meaningful knowledge about themselves
and about work that serves as a basis for
personal and professional growth.
Guidance Lessons on Personal/Social Development.
Knowledge for Youth about
Careers (KYAC) combines 2½ hours of
interactive, computer-assisted video
(ICAV) with 32 hours of print classroom
materials and exercises to prepare high
Secondary Career Development Interventions
school students to plan for their futures
(Bradshaw 1995; Welcome to KYAC!
1998). ICAV scenarios stimulate curiosity
and interest in personal and professional
growth; students role-play characters faced
with education and career choices. Subsequent
scenes show the consequences of
choices made, helping students identify
effective and ineffective choices. Classroom
sessions expand on ICAV scenarios
by helping students assess their own skills,
knowledge, and attitudes (KSAs), reinforce
effective KSAs, and apply KSAs to
real situations in their own lives. The
ICAV is considered particularly effective
for students who are not motivated to use
print materials.
Advising Interventions
Advising interventions “provide direction,
resolve impediments, and sustain
planfulness in students about their goals
for the future” (Dykeman et al. 2001, p.
22). They are most often adult-controlled,
school-based individual activities and can
be active or passive, long or short term.
They include academic and career counseling,
career-focused parent/student conferences,
career peer advising/tutoring, career
maps, career maturity and interest
assessment, career libraries/resource centers,
career clusters/pathways/majors, career
passports/skill certificates, college admissions
testing, computer-assisted career
guidance, cooperative/dual enrollment,
information interviewing, job search preparation,
personal/social preparation, portfolios/individual
career plans, and referral to
external training orcounseling/assessment.
Career Passports. In the Leander Independent
School District outside Austin, Texas,
Tech Prep Career Passports and Pathways
provide a coherent sequence of
courses to equip students with skills consistent
with career goals (Rouse 1995); local
employment trends have driven development
of 35 Passports in 6 Pathways.
Career information activities and aptitude
and interest assessment help ninth-grade
students identify a career goal, plan, and
Passport. Students select subsequent
courses and work experiences to support
and complement their chosen Passport.
Completed Passports contain a transcript,
resume, letters of introduction and recommendation,
and student work portfolio.
Students see them as a tool for providing
and sustaining direction in school—“a
good road map for achieving your goals”
(p. 39)—and as a “great door opener for
jobs” (p. 45).
Computer-assisted Career Guidance. DIS-
COVER, ACT’s computer-assisted career
guidance program, helps students develop
a personal profile, build a career plan based
on their personal profile, access
crosswalked information about occupations
and education, and begin job search
and interview preparations (DISCOVER:
Overview 2001; Taber and Luzzo 1999).
Self-assessment helps students discover
vocational identify (interests, abilities, personality,
and goals) and improve their level
of career development (clarification of
values, career and self-knowledge, decision
making); it may also improve career selfefficacy
(confidence in their ability to make
successful career decisions). DISCOVER
is considered most effective when students
also participate in other individual and
group exploration, counseling, and planning
activities.
Curriculum-Based Interventions
Curriculum-based interventions “promote
core student knowledge and skills through
means and content relevant to the world
of work” (Dykeman et al. 2001, p. 23).
They are either adult or student controlled,
typically involve active instruction, and are
primarily group activities conducted in
school and lasting more than 2 weeks.
They include career information infused
into curriculum, career/technical education
(CTE) courses, career skills infused
into curriculum, career academies/career
magnet schools, school-based enterprises,
student clubs/activities, and Tech Prep.
Tech Prep. Tech Prep links occupational
and academic instruction in a sequential
course of occupationally focused, secondary
and postsecondary study to prepare students
for both career-oriented postsecondary
education and employment, often accompanied
by career development activities
and workplace experiences (Rouse
1995). Tech Prep coordinators report improved
student outcomes, including
changes in attitudes, greater focus, re-

newed interest in education, increased
awareness of the relevance of classwork to
careers, and better understanding of employers’
expectations and job requirements.
Integrating occupational and academic
instruction links work situations with conceptual
issues; workplace experiences reinforce
curriculum experiences by providing
students new insights and motivation
in academic subjects.
School-based Enterprises (SBEs). SBEs
enable students to gain occupational experience
in all aspects of a business like
running a radio station or selling homegrown
garden produce and home-made
dressing (Sanderson 1998; Stasz and
Kaganoff 1997). Student ownership builds
confidence, responsibility, and organizational
skills; working in teams with other
students and adults puts interpersonal and
communication skills in context. Autonomy
and discretion help students develop
appropriate decision-making and
self-management skills. Just-in-time training,
one-on-tutoring, and mentoring show
students the reality of learning on the job;
teaching other students and communicating
with outside audiences, on air or over
a sales counter, are foretastes of the workplace.
In sum, SBEs allow students to acquire
and practice occupational knowledge
and skills in the same context in which
they’ll use them—the world of work.
Work-Based Interventions
Work-based interventions “promote student
knowledge and motivation through
sustained and meaningful interactions with
work sites in the community” (Dykeman
et al. 2001, p. 21). They are typically individual
activities, away from school, either
adult or student controlled, and more than
2 weeks long; instruction is overwhelmingly
active. They include cooperative education,
internships, job shadowing, job
coaching, mentoring, service learning/volunteer
programs, work study, and youth apprenticeships.
Youth Apprenticeship. In youth apprenticeship,
sustained work-based learning
and school-based learning are made meaningful
by connecting activities (Hamilton
and Hamilton 1997). Challenging work
helps students attain both basic knowledge
and mastery of procedures and higher-level
understanding of underlying principles and
concepts; rotating placements and projects
provide broad technical competence and
knowledge of all aspects of the industry.
The workplace sets the context for standards
of personal and social competence
(e.g., reliability, diligence, self-confidence,
initiative), learning, and progress. Students
can learn from adults as coordinators, managers,
coaches, and mentors, resulting in
high academic achievement in a “combination
of knowledge, communication,
problem solving, and technical skill that
sounds like a classic definition of the welleducated
person” (p. 687). Put together,
these elements help students begin an attainable
career path with options for both
careers and further education.
Mentorship and Job Shadowing. The culminating
experience for seniors at the
Michael E. DeBakey High School for the
Health Professions in Houston is a 12-
week preceptorship program, in which students
shadow an assigned mentor for 2
hours per day, 4 days per week, at the Texas
Medical Center (Roberts 2000). Mentors
are assigned based on students’ expressed
career interests in areas ranging from medical
photography to autopsies and surgery.
Shadowing the assigned mentor “helps you
to realize that the medical world is not
TV.…The TV picture of what you want is
not accurate” (p. 32). Students can see
firsthand the need for interpersonal skills
like teamwork, communication, and leadership.
The preceptorship might either
confirm or change initial career interests,
but 98% of DeBakey students go on to
postsecondary education.
Internship. Students at a Transportation
Career Academy Program participate in a
full-time, 8-week, paid summer internship
at a transportation-related firm (Stasz and
Kaganoff 1997). Typically, interns have
limited autonomy, clear performance expectations,
and frequent feedback; they
receive classic just-in-time, show-and-tell
worksite training. Interns often face the
normal challenges of a busy office—“things
were not always where they were supposed
to be, some resources must be shared, and
sometimes it is hard to find the right answer”
(p. 42). Internships involve technical,
academic, and generic (e.g., problemsolving,
communication) skills; they also
provide broadened exposure to the transportation
industry and its different occupations
and meaningful learning about the
interdependence of jobs in work and the
importance of attitudes and behaviors like
initiative, persistence, attention to detail,
and meeting deadlines.
Dykeman et al. (2001) point out that many
CTE practitioners presently employ a shotgun
approach when programming career
development activities. This approach is
the result of not have a model through
which to organize these activities in a coherent
fashion. The problem with a shotgun
approach is that a school may
overprogram some types of activities and
underprogram other types of activities.
Thus, valuable CTE personnel and resources
are needlessly wasted. Dykeman et
al.’s taxonomy gives CTE practitioners a
practical, research-based model to use in
evaluating their career development efforts.
References
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of Career Development Interventions that
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Stasz, C., and Kaganoff, T. Learning How to
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Welcome to KYAC! Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser
University, 1998.
The work reported herein was supported under
the National Dissemination Center for Career
and Technical Education, PR/Award (No.
V051A990004) as administered by the Office of
Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department
of Education. However, the contents do not
necessarily represent the positions or policies of
the Office of Vocational and Adult Education or
the U.S. Department of Education, and you
should not assume endorsement by the Federal
Government.